On November 27, KAIST President Sung Mo Kang announced that the KAIST Youth Venture Investment Holdings (YVIH) (unofficial translation) had been established earlier that month and was now in full operation. The investment company was set up as a social enterprise that aims to promote startups by providing aspiring entrepreneurs the required seed money for commercialization.
It has been pointed out that the pre-existing support plan was limited to one-time investments and therefore was not enough to enable the startups to become financially independent. President Kang said, “Despite the growing number of entrepreneurs trying to bring their technologies to the market and fulfill their business models, the school has been lacking a well-established support scheme and a sustaining investment program. Hence a specialized holdings company was deemed necessary for the development of such social enterprises.”
The investment company would assess the feasibility of the technology or business model presented by the would-be business ventures and then invest in worthy candidates. It would also offer funding and guidance to ensure that the business ventures will be able to achieve financial independence in such a difficult economy. Such forms of business incubation include proxy intellectual property management, patent strategy consulting, and strategy proposals. Investees can also call for help upon the SK Center for Social Entrepreneurship, the KAIST Office of University-Industry Cooperation, and the KAIST Social Entrepreneurship MBA program, which is co-run by the SK Group and the KAIST College of Business.
In fact, Professor Byungtae Lee from the KAIST College of Business was appointed as the representative of the holdings company. The first graduating class of the KAIST Social Entrepreneurship MBA program is planning to pitch an investment presentation to the YVIH panel of judges later on this month.
The KAIST YVIH was founded on the 10 billion Korean Won worth of donations made by the CEO of SK Group, Tae-won Choi, back in August.